Bitcoin Search Trends on Google and Investopedia

Today, bitcoin is one of the most trending topics on search engines and social media, as investors attempt to keep up with its often dizzying see-sawing in price – with the coin surging to nearly $20,000 late last year and falling to as low as $6,133 per coin as of late June 2018. One of the best proxies of the buzz surrounding any given subject is probably its search volume on Google and other search engines. In fact, investors use Google search and social media data all the time to pick investments. Why shouldn't you as well?

Here’s a look at how bitcoin has scored on Google searches and on Investopedia.

Google Searches

The term ‘bitcoin’ continues to garner substantial interest with people turning to Google to search for more information on it. Recent data by SEMrush – a leading competitive research service for online marketing – shows bitcoin, bitcoin price, bitcoin value, bitcoin to USD and bitcoin mining as the top five bitcoin-related keywords by search volume.

Further, in one report, SEMrush concludes that there’s a strong correlation (r=91%) between bitcoin search volume and its exchange rate.

The rising price of bitcoin, and the sometimes stomach-churning corrections, has drawn increasing interest. A lot of people seem to be excited about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which have kept the world of cryptocurrencies in the news. The price trend has been guided by news from across regions and segments. While the regulatory shutdown in China was taken with a pinch of salt, Japan and the Philippines showed support for crypto by issuing licenses to bitcoin exchanges. The entry of bitcoin into financial product offerings and announcement by established institutions such as the CME Group lent it greater credibility.

During geo-political tension or financial upheaval, people have done online searches for for bitcoin as a safe haven, or at least an alternative to traditional currency. Such trends were evident at the time of the elections in the U.S., demonetization in India, the North Korea-U.S. tensions, and the recent Zimbabwean crisis.

On Google Trends, per their own description: “Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise, a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.” The graph below shows the interest over time in bitcoin. It currently strikes a value of 100, which translates into an all-time high. During November last year, its value was deemed at 10, which shows how the interest over time has gone up.

In some nations, Google searches for "Bitcoin" exceed searches for "Gold." This is the case in the nations marked in blue on the map below:

Algeria

Brazil

Columbia

Ecuador

Kenya

Lithuania

Morocco

Slovenia

Venezuela

Meanwhile, on Investopedia

Our readers have been increasingly engaging with bitcoin-related content; some of the favorite landing pages have been that of bitcoin, bitcoin stock symbol (BTC), what is bitcoin, bitcoin mining, why is bitcoin volatile, and bitcoin cash. Here are our most-trafficked Bitcoin articles:

The Bottom Line

The number of searches on Google and Investopedia are a reflection of the curiosity, interest and popularity growing around bitcoins. People across the globe are keen to learn about bitcoin, understand the process and perhaps gain from it. Although terms associated with the bitcoin ecosystem such as Ethereum, cryptocurrencies, blockchain and ICOs have seen a phenomenal rise over time, bitcoin continues to rule the game.

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Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified.